The night after Thanksgiving Day 2005 at around 3am I was on the tour bus somewhere in Europe when my cell phone awoke me in the bunk. It was my daughter Jamie, who was crying and could barely speak. The day before, her longtime childhood friend Pfc. Marc Delgado had been killed in an IED explosion on Thanksgiving Day in Iraq.
Killed with him, was his good friend and platoon leader, SSG Steven Reynolds.
Her cousins and Marc had been neighbors since early childhood, and Marc and his brothers had been a fixture in Jamie’s life all through grade school and high school. More often than not, she would be the only girl running around with a pack of boys lead by the biggest of the boys Marc, and his best friend, Jamie’s cousin J.T.. I always knew that when she was with them…she was with her “brothers” and they would always look after her like she was their little sister.<
Watching the kids go through the first loss of one of their own caused something to stir inside of me. Seeing Marc’s mom Ellen at Christmas wearing Marc’s dog tags wrenched my insides even more. I was being driven to write, but every time I would start…I felt could not tell his story in the way it needed to be told.
A year or so later, after time to settle and think, I was in L.A. watching a documentary with live footage of young soldiers in Iraq, fighting, being wounded, and more than anything, taking care of each other.
This sense of “brotherhood” and real Honor, coupled with a sense of unwavering dedication and willingness to sacrifice everything for each other, and the way Ellen was so proud of Marc, gave me the words to compose “Thanksgiving Day”.
There are no politics in the lyrics of this song. This song is not about the right or wrong of our current or past conflicts. This song is about the boys. The boys that have given their all in this generation and in the many generations before us to preserve our freedom.
The song is a free download, pass it along to anyone that you think would like to share in this story and honor Marc and his fallen and wounded brothers by remembering. Send them to this site, or send the MP3 attached in emails to anyone you know that may benefit from sharing in this song.
The song can be found on my download page. There is a link to a donation page at www.WoundedWarriorProject.org. All donations will be passed on to the WWP organization in Marc’s name.
Again…this song is not about politics, it is about remembering and honoring the sacrifice of Marc and the Soldiers and families of all that came before him, and those that will serve after him. Pass it along.
John Wesley